The Labyrinth Across Cultures

The only labyrinth among Linear B tablets is scratched on the back of a Pylos list of goats, baked when the palace burned around 1200 BCE.

Anna P. Judson, interview, Classical Studies Support, 10 November 2020, on Pylos tablet 1287; Hermann Kern, Labyrinthe (1982), as cited by Tony Phillips, 'Drawing the Cretan maze as a game'

A single unbranching path winding to a centre, drawn from Bronze Age Greece to medieval cathedral floors.

Sources4 sources

Scholarship

W. H. Matthews, Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of Their History and Development (Longmans, Green), 1922, ch. IX (Lucca Cathedral); ch. VIII (mosaic at Susa)Lucca Cathedral's wall labyrinth, once with Theseus and the Minotaur at its centre, and its inscription naming the Cretan labyrinth of Daedalus that none left but Theseus, aided by Ariadne's thread; Roman mosaics with the Minotaur at the centre.
HIC QUEM CRETICUS EDIT DAEDALUS EST LABERINTHUS
W. H. Matthews, Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of Their History and Development (Longmans, Green), 1922, ch. IX, Meaning of Church LabyrinthsAlready in 1922 the reading of church labyrinths as substitute pilgrimages was flagged as asserted without clear evidence; various meanings were proposed.
It has often been asserted, though on what evidence is not clear
Anna P. Judson, Comfort Classics: Anna P. Judson (Classical Studies Support), 2020The Pylos Linear B tablet (National Archaeological Museum, Athens, 1287) lists goats on its front and bears the only labyrinth drawn on any Linear B tablet; it dates to the end of the palace period.
we only have a handful of instances where writers have drawn on their Linear B tablets, and this is the only labyrinth